The recent trend in video cassette recorders for domestic and business uses is the elongation of the recording time, and as a result, it has become possible to load a plurality of programs in a single video tape. Among those programs loaded in a tape, some of them will be removed after regenerations of a couple of times, and some of them are for being kept permanently. Therefore, if a user wants to record a new program on a video tape which has been already fully recorded with programs, the new program should not be recorded on the portion of the tape where the programs intended for permanent keeping are recorded. Thus, if a certain portion of the tape is desired to be kept from being erased, the user has to manually switch over the system mode so that the new program should not be recorded on the undesired portion of the tape, with the result that the task is very troublesome, and that some portion of the tape can be mistakenly erased against the will of the user.
Further, in accordance with the adoption of a microcomputer in the video cassette recorder (VCR), an automatic programmed recording function is provided in the VCR. If a user wants to record a program during his absence through the utilization of such a function, it is the usual practice that the tape containing a program for permanent keeping is excluded from use, and a tape containing programs for temporary keeping or a vacant tape is used. Accordingly, there are accompanied such disadvantages that the economy in the use of video tapes is not realized due to the necessity of using a large number of tapes, and that a larger space is required for keeping the large number of tapes.